The present invention relates to repairing links in deactivated files.
A link is a pointer that refers to a target. In a file, a link can be represented as a uniform resource locator (URL) that specifies the address of the target. The target can be located in the same file as the file containing the link or in a different location, such as in another file. When the target of a link moves, the link can break or become ambiguous. A broken link is a link that points to a location that is empty because the target file that occupied the location has moved. An ambiguous link is a link that points to a location that is not empty, but contains a different target file.
Link management systems generally have tools that repair broken or ambiguous links. However, such tools do not work in all situations. For example, the tools cannot repair links in files that are deactivated. While a file is deactivated, the file cannot be modified. Deactivation of files commonly occurs in version control systems that freeze or deactivate older versions of a file in order to preserve the contents of the file. While a file is deactivated, the version control system prevents the link management system from modifying the links in the file.